We were chased out of Nicaragua with a week and a half to kill before our next scheduled destination. Because a friend had raved about Ohio (and we had only been when Scott was there for a month long trial), we decided to check out Cleveland.
We landed and walked out into cool air. After being in Nicaragua, it was amazing! Our Airbnb was a cute house out in the burbs on the west side of town. The day after we arrived, we spotted some deer just chilling in the neighbor’s yard.
Deer!
Cleveland is not the city I had imagined it to be. It feels like Austin did when I went to university there. It’s a small-large city with walkable parts, huge parks and green spaces, local restaurants and stores, and some very cool museums.
Our first big stop was checking out Lake Erie. The city has done a phenomenal job of building a large park shoreside of Erie.
The lake itself is huge (11th largest in the world). Out in the lake, you could see giant ships. We also saw lighthouses, but we didn’t make an attempt to go see them up close. The park is immaculate.
We happened to be there on an overcast day so there weren’t really any other people. I would guess that the beach and fishing piers are generally packed on a clear day. If we lived there, we would no doubt frequent the area often.
We spent a day driving around trying to get a feel for the city. It has tons of pockets of walkable areas. They are all surrounded by various green parks and trails. Even the bike routes are abundant. One of my favorite spots was East 4th Street in downtown. It isn’t a huge area, but it consists of all local owned and operated bars and restaurants. The best meal we ate in Cleveland was there: Mabel’s Barbeque. Delicious.
East 4th Street is a lively little corner of downtown Cleveland
There was more in Cleveland than we had time to do. I was dying to go to the Underground Railroad museums as well as the Civil War Memorial crypts.
We were able to see the outside but not the crypts of the Civil War Memorial.
We did make time to drag the kids to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I won’t say they loved all of it, but they did enjoy learning about Elvis Presley.
Elvis is good for all generations.
Keali trailed along with me so was introduced to Janis Joplin.
She’s clearly thrilled.
Caden enjoyed watching the Sirius XM host working the live broadcast.
The Sirius radio host.
Between the videos and the costumes in the museum, we all had quite an education. (Who even knew that Charles Manson tried to get Rolling Stone to give him a free subscription in exchange for an interview?!) Good stuff.
The kids’ favorite part of Cleveland was the science museum. I will admit that it was one of the better ones we have been to. It had a huge maker station where we spent over an hour. I may or may not have gotten a tad competitive with my rocket building.
The NASA portion of the museum was incredible.
We will now need to go to the Houston NASA museum again to check it out.
We didn’t even make it to the USS Cod or the natural history museum. The kids’ were pretty upset about spending the day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame instead of the other two. But, as far as I’m concerned, it was a good call. Scott was so excited to go to the rock and roll museum that it would’ve been difficult to not go.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Overall, we left Cleveland with a completely different understanding compared to what we expected. It was a city that would be pretty fantastic to live in. We plan to go back as soon as possible to hit the rest of the “must do’s” that we didn’t get done.
Video highlights: